Tagged: mental illness

If you’ve spent an iota of time on the Internet, you’ve likely seen trigger warnings. Trigger warnings are, as far as I can tell, a social construct used primarily to advise you that something you are about to read, watch, or listen to, contains content that some may find offensive or “triggering”. You may also have seen people lambasted for their failure to use a trigger warning by someone who deemed it necessary. So, what...

Something I’ve never shared with you guys is a weird addiction I’ve had surrounding death, which started a few weeks after I was widowed several years ago. If you asked me for a reason why I started, I’d say I just wanted to feel like I wasn’t alone. I might as well just come out and say it: I’ve been obsessed with death and everything surrounding it. There have been times where I’ve spent hours...

It’s been over a month now since I quit taking my antidepressants (Wellbutrin). If you didn’t see my original post on this topic, you may want to check it out here. To briefly summarize, I hated how it made me feel in that it made me feel nothing at all. Now that its effects seem to have subsided, I wanted to give an update on how things are going. So… what are some of the...

I jumped and the rope snapped. Not all at once, but it slackened enough to save my life in the exact moment I decided I wanted to be saved. We’d used similar rope in the barn to lift thousand pound beams to brace the ceiling. I was lucky. I jumped when my dad snapped. His loaded trigger finger sent a bolt deep into the tree over my head where he forced me to stand with...

I’m going to try and be brave today. I’m going to talk about something I’ve never spoken of publicly. In fact, it’s something that only those closest to me in my life have been privy to, and even then, only bits and pieces of the whole story. It’s not something that is easy for me to talk about because the emotions surrounding it are very complex and difficult to put into words. It’s something I’ve...

This fear came out of nowhere and a hummingbird has taken the place of my heart. My palms are sweaty and someone turned down the volume of this room that suddenly doesn’t have enough air in it. Full-blown panic attack. Every dark thought I’ve ever had shows up for a party in my brain that I don’t remember sending out invitations to. I’m choking on all the words I’ve not had the courage to say...

He was a tall, broad man with shoulders that could hold the world. Maybe sometimes they did, because he never seemed to stand up straight and even though he faked a smile, it was as transparent as the tears that framed his eyes. He told me stories of a little boy and his father before lifting his sleeves to point out perfect circles of scar tissue with cigarette stained fingers. And I would wonder about...